What is it?: The 2009 Tony Award-winning upscale farce by French playwright who also scored big with the three-character play "Art" in 1998.

What's it about? Two couples attempt to resolve a playground conflict in which one young son hit the other couple's child with a stick. Civilization ain't what it used to be. But audiences usually are delighted to see pompous parents behaving badly and their behavior unravel uproariously.

How so? It's great fun watching two sets of smug, culturally hip, full-of-themselves, 21st-century parents who find themselves reduced to primal instincts in desperate predicaments of their own making. It's the basic principal of farce: the snobs get theirs.

And the cast?: Candy Buckley (TheaterWorks' "The Little Dog Laughed") and Wynn Harmon (Westport's "Christmas Carol") portray the parents of the injured child. The mother collects — and works on — very expensive coffee-table books of "great importance" that few people read. The husband became wealthy in the frying-pan trade. His blue-collar personality is masked with talk of art appreciation, fine rum and perfectly placed white tulips.

Royce Johnson (TW's "Broke-ology") and Susan Bennett are the parents of the alleged bully boy. The father is a high-powered lawyer for a pharmaceutical company trying to get off the hook for side effects that its latest drug is causing. His subservient wife just wants to get him off the cellphone, which is making her — or maybe it was the clafouti — nauseous.

Sounds like fun: Oh, it is. But whereas the "special effect" was a high point of the Broadway production, the bit was "mimed" in the performance I saw Saturday night, which was a big disappointment. Marcel Marceau may have liked it, but it misses the primal outrageousness of the work.The show could have been more of a laugh riot with better comic care. Everyone (including director Tazewell Thompson) has done better work elsewhere. The show lacks the impeccable timing and comic invention that makes the difference between a serviceable show and an inspired one.

Buckley pushes way too hard, even when she is being cordial and charming. Harmon lays on the "dees, dems and dose" pretty thick (and doesn't convincingly project the once-a-lug look, his untucked shirt notwithstanding. Johnson is a bit too cool but his is a consistent character (and his funniest moment comes with his childish meltdown). Bennett comes closest to comic bliss as the accommodating wife who also hits bottom with a bang.

Who will like it? Couples. Friends of couples. Folks who like seeing smug upscale couples get their comeuppance. The anti-intellectuals of the Tea Party.

Who won't? Comedy perfectionists. And some may leave thinking, "The play is OK, but was this was the very best play of the 2008-09 Broadway season?"

Twitter review in 140 characters or less?: Punch and Judy meets the "Get the Guests" game from Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Result: Flawed but still fun production.

Thoughts on leaving the parking lot?: Comedy is hard but when it's masterfully done by such expert facilitators as directors Mike Nichols or Matthew Warchus, there's nothing like it. But when you're not on that wild comic ride, you notice the scenery more and the imperfections of a good but hardly great play.